OPINION:
Dr. Anthony Fauci in a White House briefing just warned of a new coronavirus variant, the Delta variant, that has moved from India to the United Kingdom and now to America, and that it’s responsible for more infections, more case surges, more severe health impacts, more hospitalizations than COVID-19 ever brought.
The left will never let the coronavirus go — it’s the perfect tool of control.
Remember when the whole thing with the coronavirus was about flattening the curve?
Two weeks ’til we flatten the curve.
Two weeks ’til we pass the danger zone of the coronavirus and return to normal.
That was the Fauci-fueled line of logic during the beginning stages of the coronavirus, used to justify closures and crackdowns on liberties.
“If you look at the curves of outbreaks, they go big peaks and then come down. What we need to do is flatten that down,” Fauci said in early March 2020. “That would have less people infected. That would ultimately have less deaths. You do that by trying to interfere with the natural flow of the outbreak.”
No du’oh, Sherlock.
Many in the media ran with Fauci’s infantile explanation of how it’s healthier to have fewer people infected by blasting out colorful graphics on their screens and pages to show first, a line that formed a mountain — a “big peak” — and second, a line that formed a flatter mound. Or, as Fauci would say, the big peaks “come down.”
And that’s how the coronavirus played out for more than a year.
Fauci would speak.
The press would listen.
Politicians on the left would exploit.
And Americans would lose their freedoms.
Rinse, repeat, rinse again.
The pandemic provided the perfect storm of fear meets Rahm Emanuel — you know, the Democrat who famously exclaimed, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
Waste not, want not. The Democrats sure have been listening. Even now, even now with curves flattened all over the place, leftists in political positions of power — like in Virginia, for example — have slid emergency health orders into states of permanence. They’ve taken the coronavirus and implemented full-time, forever-after regulatory controls on businesses, curves be danged.
“Virginia Adopts Permanent COVID-19 Safety Standards for Employers,” McGuire Woods wrote in February.
“Michigan Bureaucrats Want Permanent COVID Regulations,” the Mackinac Center for Public Policy wrote in April.
Now comes Fauci with the next and newest fearful warning.
As NPR wrote, the Delta variant of the coronavirus “may be responsible for more than 18% of cases in some Western states.”
“May be.” Maybe not, as well. You think the media will do their jobs and put in proper context the truths of virus variants, so as to show the fear-mongering isn’t actually necessary?
Nope.
Few will point out that viruses — all viruses — constantly mutate, and that when they mutate, they sometimes evolve into something that’s more easily transmissible, and sometimes not. Sometimes, they mutate into strains that can’t replicate, and so they ultimately go extinct.
So phrases like “may be” matter.
That fact is any virus can be blasted through the press as a “may be” most dangerous, most disastrous, most deadly health risk to humans, if the rhetoric is pitched just right. What keeps the people from panicking is context, truth, truthful science.
Sadly, all of that’s been lacking with the coronavirus. And Fauci is much to blame.
Here he comes again.
On the Delta variant, he spoke of rising case counts in India and the United Kingdom and said, “We cannot let that happen in the United States.”
That’s code for: Here come more lockdowns.
That’s justification for: More government pushes to get the experimental coronavirus vaccines.
And look here. Right on cue, Fauci said it: “And for those who have still not been vaccinated yet, please get vaccinated.”
The left’s coronavirus playbook has become increasingly easy to read. It’s all about the exploitation of fear for political gain. After the Delta variant, there will be another. And another. And if need be, even another.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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